6 February 1868 • Washington, D.C. (MS: NPV, UCCL 00190)
For two months there have been some fifty applications before the government for the postmastership of San Francisco, which is the heaviest concentration of political power on the coast & consequently m Ⓐemendationis a post which is much coveted. When I found that a personal friend of mine, the Chief editor of the Alta was an applicant I said I didn’t want it—I would not take $10,000 a year out of a friend’s pocket.1explanatory note The two months have passed. I heard day before yesterday that a new & almost unknown candidate had suddenly turned up on the inside track, & was to be appointed at once. I didn’t like that—& when I heard that he had been recommended to make a friend of me & he said he didn’t stand in need of me, I went after his case in a fine passion. I hunted up all our Senators & representatives & found that his name wo was al actually Ⓐemendationto come from the President at noon yesterday. I got a dozen Senators pledged against him, & had Judge Field of the Supreme Bench get out of his sick bed & visit the President early in the morning. It was jolly. In just no time at all I knocked that complacent idiot’s kite so high that it never will come down.2explanatory note Then Judge Field said if I wanted the place he could Pledge me the President’s appointment—& Senator Conness said he would guarantee me the Senate’s confirmation. It was a great temptation, but it would render it impossible to fill my book contract, & I had to drop the idea. I have to spend August & September in Hartford—which isn’t San Francisco.3explanatory note Mr. Conness offers me my choice out of five influential California offices—now some day or other I shall want an office & then, just my luck, I can’t get it, I suppose. They want to send me abroad, as a Consul or a Minister.4explanatory note I said I didn’t want any of the pie. God knows I am mean enough & lazy enough, now, without being a foreign consul.
Some time in the course of the present century I think they will create a Commissioner of Patents,5explanatory note & then I hope to get a berth for Orion.
I published 6 or 7 letters in the Tribune while I was gone6explanatory note—now I cannot get them. I suppose I must have them copied.
Love to all.
Clemens described this editor as “one of my best old friends” (10 Feb 68 to Beachclick to open link). He was Matthias (or Matthew) Gilbert Upton (1829?–97), principal editor of the San Francisco Alta California since 1861 and now presumably first among equals with editors Noah Brooks and John S. Hittell. Born in Ireland and educated at Dublin University, Upton began his journalism career on the New York Herald, where he became city editor. He moved to California in about 1852 and worked on the San Francisco Herald before joining the Alta staff. In 1866 and early 1867 he was on recreational leave “after a long and unremitting attention to duty,” but he was still writing “editorial correspondence” from the East for the Alta until the newspaper sent him to Paris in mid-April. By 1 September, however, he had returned to his post in San Francisco (SLC 1868); Rowell, 11; Langley 1868, 111, 282, 550; Upton 1867, Upton 1867, Upton 1867; San Francisco Alta California: “Arrival of the ‘Golden City,’” 2 Sept 67, 1; “Editorial Notes,” 26 June 72, 2; “His Trenchant Pen at Rest Forever,” San Francisco Call, 6 Feb 97, 14; San Francisco City and County 1867, s.v. “Upton, Matthias Gilbert”).
The “new & almost unknown candidate” was Charles A. Kennedy, a San Francisco merchant known to be a “party Democrat.” Senator Cole and California Congressman Samuel B. Axtell supported Kennedy, while Congressman James A. Johnson (also from California) opposed him, as did Senator Conness, who favored Upton (Langley 1868, 318; Rincon 1868; Jorkins 1868 and Jorkins 1868). On 2 March Clemens wrote to the Enterprise, “It seems the President not only promised the gentleman [i.e., Field] I requested to go to him that he would cancel the horseman’s [i.e., Kennedy’s] appointment, but with aggravated generosity said he believed he would not appoint anybody at all for the present” (SLC 1868). “Kite” is an archaic spelling of “kyte,” which means “belly.” Clemens’s metaphor (“knocked that ... kite so high”) echoes one he used in a July 1867 Alta letter, where he said that the Italian navy had been completely obliterated, “knocked higher than Gilderoy’s kite.” The expression alludes to a “celebrated robber” hanged in Edinburgh in 1636 “on an unusually high gallows” (SLC 1867; Lex, 94).
Clemens expected to deliver the manuscript of his book to the American Publishing Company at the beginning of August, and to stay in Hartford long enough to undertake any necessary manuscript revisions and attend to other aspects of book production (27 Jan 68 to Blissclick to open link).
In January 1869 Clemens recalled this period for Olivia Langdon, explaining his decision in rather more purposeful terms:
Why, a year ago, in Washington, when Mr. Conness, one of our Senators, counseled me to take the post of United States Minister to China, when Mr. Burlingame resigned (the place was chiefly in Mr. C.’s gift,) I said that even if I could feel thoroughly fitted for the place, I had at last become able to make a living at home & wished to settle down—& that if I roamed more, it must be in pursuit of my regular calling & to further my advancement in my legitimate profession. (SLC to OLL, 24 Jan 69click to open link, CU-MARK, in LLMT , 60)
Anson Burlingame had resigned as minister to China in November 1867 when he accepted an appointment from the Chinese government (see 19 Feb 68 to Burlingame [1st of 2], n. 2). The minister’s position went ultimately to Clemens’s friend and fellow writer J. Ross Browne, who had been nominated minister to China in late January 1868 and was confirmed in March (Senate 1887, 16:156, 194; see 17 June 68 to Fairbanks, n. 7click to open link).
Clemens published six letters in the Tribune: see 20 Nov 67 to JLC and family (2nd of 2), n. 1click to open link.
MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV).
L2 , 178–180; MTB , 1:359, excerpts; MTL , 1:148–49.
see McKinney Family Papers, pp. 512–14.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.